Off to work for me today. An odd mix of staff in the morning including the lovely but incredibly dizzy part time librarian who always forgets obvious things such as the fact we lend out books :rolls:. We also have a new member of staff who I suspect won’t last and is very tiring to be around. She keeps asking how to do things and is very patiently shown but seems to zone out and then asks again a short while later. This morning she started calling me Nicky aswell which is never going to endear her to me :(.
I was asked to do storytime so set about selecting some books and drawing a picture for the children to colour in. I found the star stamp we use to stamp the ‘loyalty’ cards that children bring to storytime each week. When they have 7 stamps they get a certificate and a free dvd loan voucher. Jan and I were quite taken with the star stamp and gave everyone a postit note with an amount of stars on it according to our highly scientific and worthy star giving system. Frankie was stroppy about not having as many stars as me but she later qualified for an additional one for being very patient with New Girl :lol:.
Storytime was okay. I have worked through the fact that actually the maximum amount of stories you can get the young children to sit through is two and what they really want to do is sing songs and do colouring. I chose ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’ which is nice and repetitive and interactive – and I can pretty much recite by heart – and one called Baby Bird about a bird taking it’s first flappy flight which had other animals for the children to spot and me to call out ‘what’s that? what noise does it make?’ which always lessens fidgeting. We did lots of singing and it was all very jolly.
The afternoon passed equally quickly and with a few laughs with Sian, another fairly new and very nice member of the team. It was a good working day :).
Meanwhile back at home Ady was here this morning. David had been over with Jeannette / Annette and they had given the children an inflatable ball (Davies), a cuddly snake (Scarlett) and two chocolate advent calendars. Ben 10 for Davies and Disney Princesses for Scarlett.
Advent calendars. On 16th October.
That’s October the sixteenth. Advent calendars. Insert your own proclamations of lunacy in the comment boxes. I fully anticipate whichever incarnation of Jeannette /Annette that wasn’t bringing over her advent calendars for them tomorrrow. And I bloody hope she will be apologising for the tardniess of their arrival when she does…
So they’d played with the inflatable ball for a bit. There was a minor kerfuffle when it was realised Scarlett had taken all the chicks out to play with and not returned them to their brooder so they were running amok in Davies’ bedroom (Chicks on the Loose! An all action film for the whole family :lol:).
In the afternoon my Mum was here and apparently it was better than last week. They went to the park where Scarlett mastered swinging on the swings without being pushed (yay!) and they had a nice long walk. All seemed calm and well when I got home just after 5 ish.
Mum stayed for a cup of tea, the children had their dinner, she left, I dealt with the chickens and some laundry, Ady arrived home and the children fannied about so ended up with no bedtime story from me but took story cds to bed with them instead. Davies reappeared downstairs at 9pm when we were eating dinner and watching Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s latest so he watched that with us, insisted on staying up to watch Planet Earth even though Ady had gone to bed and then fell asleep on the sofa. I am not relishing carrying him up the stairs to bed in a minute 🙁 .
Tomorrow was supposed to be a local ish home ed meet up but we have no petrol in my car nor money to put petrol in it, when I spoke to Davies and Scarlett neither of them was particularly bothered about going and so we’re staying home instead. We may venture to the allotment if the weather is fine, I have my rug to work on, we have various films to watch and staying home is quite an appealing prospect.
I bought the chocolates for C’s advent calendar over a month ago.
In my defence, I was on my own (a rare occurance) and saw some mini pig chocolates that I thought would be perfect for her calndar (she has a fabric pocket reusable one) so decided to grab the moment and buy them.
Wait until November 30th when I’m searching high and low to find them. Last year I think I was late filling the calendar pockets so hope to do better this year.
lol – add to your comment here where you’ve hidden them, then you’ll know where to look when you don;t know where to look!
I thought about buying an advent calendar the other day – this one – but will probably leave it until roughly the 3rd December as usual and buy reduced ones 😉
I hope you’ve sent her a thank you note 😉
That’s gorgeous, I love Eric Carle’s stuff.I have a huge ‘thing’ about chocolate advent calendars that don’t even have a nod towards anything remotely festive. I may have mentioned this before ;).
I like either nativity scenes or santa’s workshop type ones. But respect to David and Annette / Jeannette for their superb spying skills in knowing what the kids are into -as Ady said to my Mum when she got here ‘the neigjbours know the kids better than you do Sandra!!’ 😉 😆